Ferguson police gunned down 17 year old Michael Brown as he and a friend walked down the street. A witness stated police pulled up to the two boys and said “Get the fuck on the sidewalk”. According to a witness police grabbed the kid around the neck and repeatedly shot the unarmed kid.

WTFF? It’s open season on young black boys in America. Shot 10 times? Did he empty his clip? A hunter doesn’t shoot a lion 10 times.

Something is VERY wrong in America when a white man aiming down on police gets a pass and nothing happens but an unarmed black kid walking down the street is shot 10 times.

Young black boys can’t even walk down the street or it could be a death sentence. How do we protect our kids from racists police and vigilantes? Marching isn’t working.

How can this happen again?

What am I saying, OF COURSE IT HAPPENED AGAIN.

He was unarmed.
He had his hands up.
He was 17 years old.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE THE POLICE DOING WITH M-16 MACHINE GUNS ON A ROUTINE STOP?

This is a country of 300 million.

I’m tired of White people and the Media pretending that there isn’t a war on Black people in this country!

When Black people bring up the obvious racial component of this against the Black community by law enforcement, White people always want to diminish it, and disregard our valid feelings about it.

So, before any trolls begin and think about posting here…

I want you to find 25 cases where WHITE PEOPLE are MURDERED by the police like this.

Unarmed and choked like Eric Garner in New York.
Standing in a Wal-Mart – a place that sells and shills ACTUAL FIREARMS – with a Plastic BBGuns – being shot down
This young man being shot with his hands in the air.
Being shot in the back ‘ resisting arrest’.
‘Committing Suicide’ while being handcuffed.
Killing a 92 year old woman in her house under a wrong warrant.

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About SouthernGirl2

A Native Texan who adores baby kittens, loves horses, rodeos, pomegranates, & collect Eagles.
Enjoys politics, games shows, & dancing to all types of music. Loves discussing and learning about different cultures.
A Phi Theta Kappa lifetime member with a passion for Social & Civil Justice.

The killing by police of Michael Brown, a teen in the St. Louis area, is burning up social media and starting to get mainstream media coverage. This is an important developing story raising questions about police conduct, and investigations are underway. But some media outlets have already used this gruesome crime scene to paint another picture, which plays to the prejudices they assume in their readers, and just happens to coincide with how police want the incident to be framed.

In the hours that followed Brown’s shooting, his body reportedly was left lying in the street for up to 4 hours. Photos from the scene show a substantial flow of blood running down the street from his corpse. (They can be found online, but out of respect for the victim and his family we won’t post them here.) Brown’s relatives began to gather at the scene, distraught at the sight of their loved one bleeding out on the street. Police were keeping the angry citizens at bay while evidence was being gathered. People in the crowd were furious. Some shouted obscenities. Others vented their anger directly at the police on the scene, including some shouts of “Kill the police!” The police called in forces from around the region, and a highly militarized response, including armored vehicles and officers with dogs, reported to the site, creating disturbing echoes of photos from the 1960s civil rights movement.

Police say the FBI is taking over the investigation of a suburban St. Louis police officer who fatally shot an unarmed teenager.

Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson tells The Associated Press that he was informed Monday that the FBI was going to take over the investigation into the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Jackson says he welcomes the move.

Police say the teen was shot multiple times Saturday in a scuffle with an officer.

Tensions erupted in Ferguson after a candlelight vigil Sunday night. Crowds looted and burned stores, vandalized vehicles and taunted officers who tried to block access to parts of the city. Nearly three dozen people were arrested, though the area was relatively quiet early Monday.

The FBI in St. Louis didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment.

—–> Retweeted by Shannon In Miami Charlíe @CharlieAdrien · 7h“Eyewitness speaks on the murder of #MikeBrown”:

……………………….Published on Aug 10, 2014 This man lives in Canfield/Ferguson, knew Mike personally and witnessed what happened. Rumors of him stealing are shut down. Rumors that he reached for ‘something’ are shut down.
…………………………..
(Note from Yahtzeebutterfly: Here is what I have transcribed so far….timestamp 0:01 to timestamp 0:25

What the f, and then he kicked the door open trying to hit him with the door. Door flew back, hit his leg, brother. He done shot, he pulled his gun out, shot inside the car trying to hit him. He got out the car, brother. Doing on his knees (in this video this witness is demonstrating how Michael Brown had his hands up, surrendering), like “Brother, don’t shoot me. Brother, don’t shoot me” Boom….shot him dead in the head, brother. Then walked up to his body, shot him four more times. Looked at his eyes, paused for a minute, shot him four more times. Dead, brother….

Sounds like some big time police corruption in that town. Not hard to guess when cops decide to harass black kids like that and then murder them for no reason.

This country has a cop problem. Even these local police departments think they are the some kind of f**king military organization when in truth they are civil servants paid by taxpayers. They got confused somewhere along the line and forgot who they work for, who signs their paychecks, and what their duties are supposed to be. Murdering peaceful citizens is not what they are supposed to be doing, but that is what they have been doing for as long as they have been in existence in this country.

This country needs to face up to its cop problem that only gets worse every day that goes by.

Yeah, when I read they were in full riot gear that was my first thought. The cops want a riot. They think it will support their position, that they were being attacked, and killed in self-defense or within their rights.

Video: Witness to Shooting of Black Teenager: Police Said “Get the F-ck on the Sidewalk”
Witnesses say the unarmed teen had his hands up when the officer shot him again
By Charles Johnson

Here’s a video from Fox 2 in St. Louis, with interviews with witnesses to the police shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. According to his friend Dorin Johnson, who was with Brown when the confrontation occurred, they were walking in the street to Brown’s grandmother’s apartment when a squad car pulled up and the officer driving told them to “get the f-ck on the sidewalk.”

According to police, one of the teens allegedly pushed the police officer back into the car and assaulted him (witnesses dispute this claim, however); then as they ran away, the police officer fired multiple times, killing Brown. Witnesses say Brown had his hands up when the officer shot him twice more.

The East St. Louis Riot (May and July 1917) was an outbreak of labor- and race-related violence that caused between 40 and 200 deaths and extensive property damage. The incident took place in East St. Louis, Illinois, an industrial city on the east bank of the Mississippi River across from St. Louis, Missouri. It was the worst incidence of labor-related violence in 20th-century American history,[1] and one of the worst race riots in U.S. history.

The local Chamber of Commerce called for the resignation of the police chief. At the end of the month, ten thousand people marched in silent protest in New York City in condemnation of the riots.

Police Shooting Victim Michael Brown Remembered as a ‘Gentle Giant’
“Let’s make something out of nothing”
By Charles Johnson

I have a pretty tough shell after 13 years of blogging, but this report by Elisa Crouch about 18-year old Michael Brown, gunned down by a police officer yesterday in Missouri, brought tears to my eyes. What a tragic loss to the world. Michael Brown Remembered as a ‘Gentle Giant’.

Michael Brown posted a haunting message on Facebook last week as he prepared to enter a new phase in his life — college.

“if i leave this earth today,” he wrote to a friend, “atleast youll know i care about others more then i cared about my damn self.”

Brown, 18, died Saturday after a Ferguson police officer shot him multiple times outside an apartment complex as he walked to his grandmother’s home. Brown was two days from starting class at Vatterott College. Close friends had been packing up and departing for schools such as Kansas State University and Arkansas Baptist University on sports scholarships.

“Everyone else wanted to be a football player, a basketball player,” said Gerard Fuller, who had known Brown since second grade at Pine Lawn Elementary School. “He wanted to own his own business. He’d say, ‘Let’s make something out of nothing.’”

Brown graduated from high school at the predominately African-American Normandy High School, a high-poverty school in a district that has been at the center of legislative battles and a string of politically charged decisions by the Missouri Board of Education.

Teachers described Brown as a “gentle giant,” a student who loomed large and didn’t cause trouble. Friends describe him as a quiet person with a wicked sense of humor, one who loved music and had begun to rap. He fought an uphill battle to graduate.

The last thing Ferguson needs is a SWARM of POLICE CARS. As if these folks are going to open fire on them.

Right now, black people should be the ones FEARFUL of these disgusting POS. But their presence is supposed to show they’re there to en they’re the ones who keep the peace, when they’re the ones who incited the need for the gathering, by murdering Michael Brown in broad daylight and in COLD BLOOD.

I really like #3 about the forward facing body cameras while on duty. I can see where this would reduce the incentive for cops to commit crimes and then tell unsubstantiated, preposterous lies that get picked up by the mainstream media to exonerate them. Cops think they are invincible right now.

Marlene Pinnock, that’s her name SFGate.com. Call Marlene Pinnock by her name.

See how the news print identifies Marlene as “LA woman punched by cop?”

THIS: “Andrew said in his report that she was a danger to herself and wrote that “upon contacting the subject she was talking to herself. The subject began telling me ‘I want to walk home’ and called me ‘the devil.’ The subject then tried to walk into traffic lanes.”

Well how about that, if Marlene Pinncok called Andrew a “DEVIL” for nearly beating her head in and killing her… I say he’s is with red cape and pitch fork included.

“If in fact she did call him the devil is secondary to the fact that he proved to be either the devil or a close relative,” Harper said. “Because he treated her in a manner nobody should ever be treated.”

I am glad that Rep. Maxine Waters is on board supporting Marlene Pinncok!

The incident has drawn outrage from U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, who called it police brutality and demanded the officer be fired, and civil rights groups including the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

(CNN) — A friend and witnesses say Missouri teen Michael Brown was unarmed and had his hands in the air when a Ferguson police officer shot and killed him, but that account is in dispute.

“The genesis of this was a physical confrontation,” Jon Belmar, chief of the St. Louis County Police Department, said at a Sunday news conference.

The officer tried to leave his vehicle just before the shooting on Saturday afternoon, but Brown pushed him back into the car, “where he physically assaulted the police officer” and struggled over the officer’s weapon, Belmar said.

A shot was fired inside the police car, and Brown was eventually shot about 35 feet away from the vehicle, Belmar said, adding few details because he didn’t want to “prejudice” the case.

All shell casings collected at the scene were from the officer’s weapon, Belmar said. He further said the medical examiner would issue a ruling on how many times Brown was shot, but “it was more than just a couple.”

A Few Thoughts on Ferguson
By Liberal Librarian
I can’t even pretend to internalize what’s going on through the hearts of Mike Brown’s family. I can’t pretend to internalize what African Americans all over the country are feeling at young Mr. Brown’s execution.

I can ask a few questions.

What was the last time a white teenager was killed for stealing a candy bar?

What was the last time a white teenager was killed by a community watch vigilante for walking down the street?

What was the last time a white father was gunned down by police for handling an air rifle at Walmart?

If you are scratching your heads trying to come up with the answer, the answer is simple: never.

If your answer then is to say “Well, they [all those black folks] looked suspicious”, then you’re part of the festering racism which works to hold back this country.

I straddle two worlds. As a child of Cuban immigrants, I’m putatively in the Latino world. You can ask Chicanos from East L.A. of their run ins with police.

However, the Latino community is as diverse as the broader American community. It spans my black Dominican friends with whom I grew up in New York, to my brown Mexican sister in law, to my immdediate family, virtually indistinguishable from “white America”. You can be Latino and not have that fraught relationship with the police which so many African Americans have. I remember my mother having a version of “the talk” with me; her version was “Don’t be afraid of the police. They’re on our side.” That’s not the talk African American parents have with their black sons.

Abraham Lincoln said that a country cannot survive half slave and half free. A modern variation on that aphorism would be that a country cannot survive half free and half under siege. What happened to Mike Brown is what happens to a community under siege, policed closely, any infraction a possible cause of death by police fire. What was so threatening about that young man that he had to be shot ten times? Was there no other course of action the police could have taken to prevent a needless death, a family’s anguish, a community’s outrage? Too often, the police work to “serve and protect” one segment of society while keeping other segments under a heavy thumb. That shouldn’t be how police operates. Entire communities shouldn’t be suspect and subjected to oppression. Police should work with all communities in respect, making sure all communities are safe. When police see entire communities as suspect, that leads to a morgue full of Mike Browns.

Walmart Airgun Death Looks Worse Every Passing Day
Posted by Bob Owens on August 9, 2014 at 3:43 pm

The more we hear about the shooting death of John Crawford III inside a Beavercreek, Ohio Walmart, the worse it sounds. Evidence continues to suggest that Crawford was effectively SWATted by an ex-Marine.

Crawford was then killed by Beavercreek police officers that may have been amped up over the Marine’s apparently embellished description of what was occurring, and who may not have given Crawford a reasonable amount of time to comply with instructions to drop the BB gun.

We’d mentioned in our previous post on the subject that it appeared to us that Crawford had been SWATted by a former Marine and his wife.

Ronald Ritchie made the 911 call to police that set events in motion, and even though his wife April was confined April and Ronald Ritchie, in an interview Wednesday night with News Center 7′s Jessica Heffner and Dayton Daily News Staff Writer Kelli Wynn, said they were in the hardware department when they saw a man leaving an aisle and walk past them with the rifle pointed toward the sky.

“He got on his cell phone right after he walked past me,” April Ritchie said. Ritchie was on her cell phone, talking with her mother. She had broken an ankle and was riding a scooter.

“Guy. Gun. Hold on,” April Ritchie recalled telling her mother.

They followed the man at a safe distance and Ronald Ritchie, a former Marine, called 911 at 8:21 p.m.

“Anytime I saw people walking his way, I would get their attention,” April Ritchie said, waving her hands for the reporters to demonstrate what she did. She said at one point, a family was standing next to the man with the rifle, but didn’t notice the rifle. The man turned to look at them with a stare she described as if he was telling them, “don’t come near me.”

He was holding a cellphone between his left ear and left shoulder while messing with the rifle, she said. “He just kept messing with it and I heard a clicking,” she said.

Ronald Ritche [sic] said the man “was just waving it at children and people. Items…. I couldn’t hear anything that he was saying. I’m thinking that he is either going to rob the place or he’s there to shoot somebody else.” The man looked kind of serious, Ronald Ritchie said. “He didn’t really want to be looked at and when people did look at him, he was pointing the gun at them. He was pointing at people. Children walking by.”

“The hardest thing about what Black folks face in America is how few people outside the Black community fully grasp the enormity of it.”

Therein lies the problem.

The question is, how do you reach people? And how do you reach the people who would even care?

I think about this every time this happens, and that is often. What really protects us from each other except the rule of law? The shared belief that crime has consequences? What else is out there that even has potential? Love? No, most people just aren’t wired that way. The rule of law is all we’ve got.

I see this more and more as a bottom up, slow infiltration of more blacks in positions of authority in law enforcement and the criminal justice system which is now dominated by whites. I remembered when I volunteered for the Democrats, they talked a lot about focusing on low level elected positions when that was all we could do. The idea is to quietly consolidate and build a base, get bigger and keep trying to move up. It is community by community, but slowly and eventually it adds up when people believe they can do this.

I don’t think marching and boycotts are the sole answer to the systemic corruption and injustice in the criminal “justice” system. Nor will they do much to eliminate these redneck lawmen. But marching and boycotts make a big statement and they are certainly the first line of defense. But long term, it’s the rule of law and the fear of consequences that might stop folks from killing each other, including murdering cops.

My heart is so sickened by this, at the same time as knowing that as a white mother I have never felt the stress and nights of worry fearing for the safety of my children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews from the police who negatively profile, stereotype, and gun down innocent Blacks.

I reach out to you in a caring embrace for all that you are feeling and experiencing in your hearts (again) this morning. I am so sorry.

These are words that should begin, maintain, and end in dialogue, when white folks speak about experiences they don’t have.

It’s called EMPATHY. I don’t mean sympathy.

There’s a difference. For me, sympathy implies a person is sorry for you, they feel above you. You know a pat on the head, you’ll get over it by and by, kind of gestures.

Empathy implies: I may not have experienced what you’re going through, but I feel your pain, putting oneself in the other’s shoes, just for that moment. How would you feel if someone gunned down your son. It’s not hard.

Yahtc, in one of the Cicely Tyson videos that was posted here a couple of days ago, she talks about the times and how no one expected this is where we would be in 2014, with respect to race. If someone told me this back in the 1970s, I would have argued forever that it would be impossible.

Yet, here we are and I find myself unable to process what is happening right here in America. I keep reading about the millenials being different, not burdened by racism in the ways their parents and especially their grandparents have been. So where are they? Where are the problem solvers? We should be ready to pass the torch.

In the interim, I suppose that I just wish there were more reasonable, empathic people like you. Honestly, I don’t know where we are headed.

I agree with yahtzeebutterfly, speak out against injustice whenever and wherever it happens. Those of us with love in our hearts must unite, regardless of race or creed or sexual preference or whatever difference is used to divide us. Peace to all. From a disillusioned white man.

The Ferguson redneck lawmen will “interview” witnesses, try to confuse them and get them to say things that support the cops, then have conflicting stories. I hope the witnesses are black people of strong character and conviction.

FERGUSON, Mo. – Chief Jon Belmar with the St. Louis County Police Department held a news conference Sunday morning and released new information about the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

Brown was shot and killed Saturday afternoon by a Ferguson police officer.

Belmar said the incident started when Brown physically assaulted the police officer, pushing him into the officer’s vehicle. He says there was a struggle inside the car, and at some point Brown reached for the officer’s weapon. One shot was fired inside the vehicle.

Police LYING all over the place. OK, tell me again how can someone be going for an officer’s gun while they’re trying to flee? And why would a kid going to college on Monday attack a police officer and mess up his future? It’s the same old shit time after time…when police are in the wrong for shooting an unarmed black man/woman/boy… here comes the excuse…they were going for the gun.

These cops are leftover from bygone days when white men killed black men with impunity, with no fear of consequences. They don’t even care if their lies make sense. As white supremacists, they believe they will only be judged by white supremacists.

That dynamic must change. We need more black police chiefs, more black prosecutors, and more black judges.

The cops ALWAYS lie. And the sociopaths wearing badges who do this will keep doing it as long as they get away with it. And they do get away with it, no matter how implausible their lies are, even when there is a video proving they are lying (ex: Oscar Grant.)

It is amazing how black men can keep their sanity despite the insanity that happens to them. I remember one time I took my wife to a medical appointment at an office building, usually I drop her off at the entrance and I wait in my car in the parking lot usually listening to music or talk radio. Anyway this one time I decided to go in the lobby to use the rest room. As I exited my car this white lady was walking towards me, the look of fear she had or her face was palpable, she clutched her purse so tight her hands turned red. As usual I smiled at her to ease her fears, see I’ve discovered that when I run into white people on a one on one situation I smile just so they will feel comfortable. I’m tired of smiling; I’m tired of having to worry about some stranger feeling comfortable or uncomfortable in my presence. Why is it that when I’m the only black person in an elevator with a bunch of white peoples, nobody smiles to make me feel comfortable? Why is it that when I’m anywhere and I’m the only black person there, nobody smiles at me to make me feel comfortable? The average black man will tell you, if he’s lived long enough, that he’s discovered certain mechanisms he uses to make people feel comfortable in his presence. So now another black kid is dead under unclear circumstances, another black community is in pain, and another policeman is on paid administrative leave. By this time tomorrow we’ll know everything this young black kid has done since he left his mother’s womb, the good and the bad, the right and the wrong. I’ve got an eight year old son; I used to wonder about what college he will attend or what does he want to do when he grows up. As black men we’ve learned to focus our thinking on the present more so than on the future when it comes to our black boys.

Just two days after the muted relief of a measure of justice in the murder of Renisha McBride, another young black life has been cut short, a life lived on the same razor’s edge of suspicion and fear that has become all too familiar. Details are still somewhat murky, but according to several witnesses, police in Ferguson, Missouri, shot down 18 year-old Michael Brown in the street as he held his hands up, unarmed, then shot him up to nine more times after he fell. Here’s how one witness described it:

Crowds soon formed to protest the shooting, and police from 15 different departments responded to the scene following reports of gunshots. Brown’s body was reportedly left in the street for four hours before he was removed.

While the scene of the shooting eventually calmed, KDSK reports that protests at the Ferguson Police Department continued into the night, in what’s called a “vigil” when white people do it, but in this case, constituted “unrest”:

Crowds soon formed to protest the shooting, and police from 15 different departments responded to the scene following reports of gunshots. Brown’s body was reportedly left in the street for four hours before he was removed.

While the scene of the shooting eventually calmed, KDSK reports that protests at the Ferguson Police Department continued into the night, in what’s called a “vigil” when white people do it, but in this case, constituted “unrest”:

Yes, well, shooting an unarmed kid ten times is one thing, but that trash fire could really hurt someone!

Police have confirmed the shooting, but little else, and as if the people of Ferguson, or across the nation via social media, needed any more reason to be outraged, their response to community grief and frustration was a show of force, rather than a show of concern. Aside from minimal statements to the press, there has been no press conference, no hint of what precipitated the shooting, and perhaps most tellingly, no denial that the young man was unarmed.

Photo:Lesley McSpadden, center, drops rose petals on the blood stains from her 18-year-old son Michael Brown who was shot and killed by police in the middle of the street in Ferguson, Mo., near St. Louis on Saturday, Aug. 9, 2014.

McSpadden, told an acquaintance the shooting was “wrong and it was cold-hearted,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

A spokesman with the St. Louis County Police Department, which is investigating the shooting at the request of the local department, confirmed a Ferguson police officer shot the man. The spokesman didn’t give the reason for the shooting. (AP Photo/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Huy Mach)

Are they actually recruiting sociopaths capable of murder to be policemen or do that many of them actually slip through the cracks? Dear God, something has to be done. This is getting worse, these murdering cops have absolutely no fear of consequences. They believe they are entitled to kill and the reason can be just that they want to.

Excerpt:Police have confirmed the shooting, but little else, and as if the people of Ferguson, or across the nation via social media, needed any more reason to be outraged, their response to community grief and frustration was a show of force, rather than a show of concern. Aside from minimal statements to the press, there has been no press conference, no hint of what precipitated the shooting, and perhaps most tellingly, no denial that the young man was unarmed.

The notion of black people as threats is older than America itself, but there is something new and disturbing about this current roster of names added to those etched even in our recent past. Rodney King, Amadou Diallo, Eleanor Bumpurs, Abner Louima, these incidents were all rather far removed from the era that consumed the life of Emmett Till, but still occurred during times of roiling racial tension that was palpable to all. Even the killing of Sean Bell happened in the waning days of the pre-post-racial era before Barack Obama was elected president, and our popular (white) culture declared an end to racism.

What’s different now is that in post-racial America, it has become acceptable to be “post-racial,” and still fear black people. Policing strategies have legalized racism, and the media, beginning with the killing of Trayvon Martin, has made the view of black people as de facto threats just another side of the argument, and a persuasive one for many.

You can lock up all the killers of unarmed black people, or not lock them up, and it will make no difference the next time some panicky person with a gun shoots down the next Michael Brown, or Renisha McBride, or Jonathan Ferrell, or John Crawford, or chokes out the next Eric Garner. The people who have made it their business to legitimize the view of black culture as the wellspring of criminality have blood on their hands, and will continue to have blood on their hands.

My innocent fellow Black citizens have ALWAYS faced this horrific treatment by police. Why hasn’t ALL (and I mean ALL) of America condemned this in the past, in this last year, in this last month? If ALL Americans do not speak up and condemn this treatment, then I BELIEVE America has NO decency and NO moral conscience.

What needs to be address MOST at this crucial moment when an UNARMED Black child with his hands up in a SURRENDER mode is the treatment of our innocent fellow Black citizens….the UNJUST, NEGATIVE profiling and stereotyping of Blacks by LE, wanna-be cops and hateful racists.

All of us who have the benefits and advantages of white privilege need to speak up and stand up against this evil targeting of our fellow Black citizen.

We cannot be silent; we cannot put our heads in the sand; we cannot hope it is going to stop. We need to act now! We need to march, sign petitions, talk to our communities, talk to our friends and acquaintances.

For me as a white person…for any white person…to remain silent = guilt. This has to STOP.

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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.